Archives for category: Charter Schools
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Julian Vasquez Heilig Reviews Jim Horn’s Book About KIPP

By dianeravitch
November 8, 2015 //
13

Julian Vasquez Heilig explains that he first started researching charter schools because of his encounter with KIPP Austin.

He planned to work with KIPP Austin on their problems with attrition of black male students. Then Oprah celebrated KIPP as just the right place for black students, and the collaboration and research project were dead.

Now he reviews Jim Horn’s book about KIPP from his perspective as a knowledgeable researcher. The new book is called “Work Hard, Be Hard: Journeys Through “No Excuses” Teaching.”

KIPP is the most celebrated charter chain in the nation. It has received hundreds of millions of dollars in gifts and grants from foundations, individuals, and government.

Horn and his collaborators write about the perspectives of some 30 disillusioned former KIPP teachers.

Heilig writes that screaming at students is common practice in KIPP charter schools:


Why does KIPP encourage and/or allow these practices? Horn writes, school leaders relayed that “because of cultural differences, black students are accustomed to being screamed at…because that’s how their parents speak to them.” A KIPP teacher characterized the worst offender at her school as a “screamer, swearer and humiliator…..”

 

KIPP might also argue that they are the beneficiaries of widespread support in communities across the nation. It is very clear that KIPP benefits from powerful influential and wealthy supporters in government, the media, and foundations. Their no excuses approach to educating poor children has resonated with the elites in society and they have showered the corporate charter chain with resources for decades. So it may be surprising to some to read the counternarrative from KIPP teachers that is quite different than what you typically read in the newspapers, see in documentaries like Waiting for Superman, and generally experience in the public discourse. I proffer that the KIPP teachers’ counternarratives in Journeys should be required reading for all of KIPPs influential supporters. Why? Mutua (2008) explained the importance of counternarratives in society:

In their broadest formulation, counternarratives are stories/narratives that splinter widely accepted truths about people, cultures, and institutions as well as the value of those institutions and the knowledge produced by and within those cultural institutions. The term counternarrative itself clearly highlights its essence in expressing skepticism of narratives that claim the authority of knowledge of human experience or narratives that make grand claims about what is to be taken as truth.

So what is the counternarrative that the current and former KIPP teachers? There is a saying that I often heard in Austin that if you visit a KIPP school you would become KIPPnotized— essentially very impressed by their approach. One of the KIPP teachers spoke to being initially impressed during her recruitment and then later discovering that KIPP was “hell.”

[A former teacher wrote:] There was so much about it that was so good and promising in the beginning, and I got hooked into that from the minute I saw the news piece on them… but the dirty little secrets are what you don’t know until you are in their trenches.

The KIPP teachers in Journeys detail a variety of working condition issues that created high levels of turnover specific to the KIPP model in their schools— too many to discuss here. One teacher compared her experience teaching in KIPP and a public school. She said she wouldn’t recommend teaching in KIPP and stated “I wouldn’t wish it on anyone who wanted to be a teacher for the long-term…It’s exhausting. It’s demoralizing.” You might be wondering: If the working conditions are as bad as the current and former KIPP teachers say they were, how could the charter chain campuses stay open? Journeys explains,

Without a constant infusion of new teachers to replace all those who burn out… KIPP would have to shut its doors… The role of Teach For America and programs based on Teach For America’s hyper-abbreviated preparation are crucial, then, for the continued survival of… KIPP….

In summary, Journeys is shocking— but expected considering what is known about KIPP’s “no excuses” culture. What makes this piece unique is the unprecedented interviews with current and former KIPP teachers across many schools and years in the charter chain. While many claim that KIPP is beyond reproach and is the shining star of charter schools, I submit that we should instead be asking whether KIPP can actually reform their reform based on the counternarratives provided by the KIPP teachers, or whether their approach is simply a pathological and abusive approach that the elites would never prescribe or allow for their own kids— except of course if they sent them away to military school.

Categories Charter Schools, KIPP Charter Schools, Teachers

Chicago: UNO Near Bankruptcy

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2015 //
8
  1. UNO was once Chicago’s most powerful Hispanic organization. It launched numerous charter schools and won a grant of $98 million from the state legislature to add more. Its leader, Juan Rangel, was the co-chair of Rahm Emanuel’s election campaign. Everything went well until it was discovered that UNO was giving contracts for the new building to family members, friends, and lobbyists. Then its leader stepped down. Now its financial straits are such that it may have to declare bankruptcy. Six of its charters serving 4,000 students may be affected. Others were gathered into a new chain called UNO Charter School Network.

 

Meanwhile the Chicago Board of Education is set to close four charter schools with low performance.

 

Whoever thinks that turmoil is good for children does not know much about children.

Categories Charter Schools, Chicago

Lawsuit Accuses Achievement First Charter School of Denying Appropriate Treatment to Students with Disabilities

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2015 //
48

A lawsuit was filed in federal court on behalf of five students at Achievement First Crown Heights, claiming that the charter school did not provide mandated services “and were punished for behavior that arose from their disabilities.”

The lawsuit charged that the students did not get physical therapy and other services for weeks, and that a student with autism “was disciplined for not looking in the direction a teacher instructed or for hiding under his desk.”

Achievement First is a “no-excuses” charter chain with schools in New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Its backers include some of the wealthiest supporters of privatization. The families are also suing the New York City Department of Education and the New York State Education Department for permitting Achievement First to avoid its legal responsibilities to the children. One parent said that her autistic son, a third-grader, was sent to a second-grade classroom as punishment for his behavior. The website of the chain “describes this approach as part of Achievement First’s strict approach to discipline.” It is part of a policy called “sweating the small stuff.”

It will be interesting to see whether federal courts allow no-excuses charter schools to abrogate the rights of students with disabilities.

Categories Charter Schools, Special Education

Camp Philos: Where Privatizers Meet

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2015 //
31

Last year, Camp Philos had its first meeting in a remote area of the Adirondacks of New York. Governor Cuomo was the keynote speaker at this gathering of philosophers who strategize about replacing public schools with private management and opening up the secure flow of government funding to private investors.

This year, the philosophers’ camp convened in Martha’s Vineyard, an equally inaccessible and very expensive location. It was in late October. Some of the stars of privatization were there, plus a few new faces.

The event was sponsored by the Broad Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, and ConnCAN. The usual lineup of billionaires paid for this strategy session on how to steal democracy from the public, how to promote the ALEC agenda while calling yourself a Democrat.

Categories Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, ConnCAN, Corporate Reform, Democrats for Education Reform, Privatization, Walton Foundation

Peter Greene: The Difference Between Magnets and Charters

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2015 //
21

Peter Greene here responds brilliantly to those charter advocates who defend the selectivity of charters by comparing them to public magnet schools. The charter defenders say that magnet schools select their students too.

But Greene points out that the student rejected by a charter is on her own, while the student rejected by a magnet is the responsibility of the school system.

For example:

“Conversation A

“Student: Is it true Mighty Swell Magnet School is closing?

“School: I’m afraid it is, due to budgetary cuts and enrollment considerations, the district is shutting down MSMS and we won’t open next fall. However, in keeping with our legal and ethical responsibilities, we have already placed you within one of the district’s other schools. Don’t worry. Your education will continue without interruption next year.

“Conversation B

“Student: Hey! This door is locked! How am I supposed to get to class today.

“Charter: We closed. It just didn’t make business sense to keep operating, so we are outies. Go away.

“Student: But– my education!!

“Charter: Not our problem. Have a nice life.”

Categories Charter Schools, Privatization

Ohio: Public School Districts Bill State for Revenue Lost to Charters

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2015 //
16

Ohio Equity and Adequacy Coalition reports that public school districts are billing the state for revenue lost to state-created charters. Thus far, three districts have billed the state. There are likely to be more. 

        

Here is the first:
“Woodridge Local School District invoices Ohio Department of Education (ODE) in the amount of $5,027,058.38 for deductions of funds for charter schools

 

“The Woodridge Local School District Board of Education authorized Superintendent Walter Davis and Treasurer Deanna Levenger to invoice ODE to recoup losses of $5,027,058.38 for deductions made to charter schools for the period of FY 2000 through FY 2015.

The Logan Hocking Board of Education adopted a resolution to invoice the state, in the amount of $4,729,901, for the charter school deductions since year 2000. This sparked a front page article in the Logan Daily News.

The article covered several aspects of the privatization movement.

Ed Penrod, a board member and OSBA President, is quoted in the article, “What is going on needs public outcry.””
 

“The Woodridge Board of Education urges other districts to do likewise.”
William Phillis

Ohio E & A 
Now another district has sent a bill to the state:
“Another district invoices the state for funds lost to charters
“Logan Hocking Local School District adopted a resolution October 26 to bill the state in the amount of nearly $5 million for deductions for charter students. One of the Board members, Edgar Penrod, is President of the Ohio School Boards Association this year.”

William Phillis

Ohio E & A 

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform

Michigan: How Far Will a Charter School Go to Prevent Teachers from Joining a Union?

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2015 //
15

This is the story of an enthusiastic young teacher who eagerly sought a position in a Michigan charter school, only to be disillusioned by the administration’s indifference to teachers and their views about their work.

When teachers in the charter school became frustrated by their powerlessness, they decided to form a union. Bad idea. The enthusiastic young teacher was out of a job and out of teaching.

The story is bigger than just one person, however. It is the story of how charters began with the sponsorship of the nation’s most important union leader, Albert Shanker, but is now vehemently opposed to unions.

Nationally, 93% of charter schools are non-union. Their teachers are at-will employees.

In Michigan, 79% of the charters operate for profit.

This was not what Shanker had in mind.

When reformers wonder why unions oppose charter schools, it is because the overwhelming majority of charter schools do not permit their teachers to join a union and to have a voice in their working conditions, in the curriculum, or discipline policies, or anything else.

The money behind the charter movement never wanted unions in their schools.

[Michigan’s] focus on free markets and privatization — 79 percent of Michigan’s charter schools are run by for-profit management companies— set a somewhat strained tone between the local unions and the charter movement. Nationally a similar phenomenon was occurring, resulting in the AFT and the National Education Association, the two largest teachers unions, taking national stances against charters as well. In 1993, one year after the first charter opened, Shanker himself renounced the idea, calling charters an anti-union “gimmick.”

As unions pushed against charter schools, the education reform movement shoved back with a narrative of schools in crisis, which largely blamed incompetent teachers, and the unions protecting them, for the achievement gap. Charter schools could do their part in this generation’s civil rights battle — education equality — by using their flexibility to get around unions and collective bargaining, and instead stand up for hiring-and-firing latitude.

While the Michigan Association of Public School Academies’ spokesperson Buddy Moorehouse says the coalition for charter school leaders “does not have an official stance on unions” (MT tried getting in touch with president Dan Quisenberry on several occasions but he would only speak through Moorehouse), their website indicates partiality explaining that most charter schools don’t have unions because they “prefer the ability to [be] innovative and remove the red tape element when a teacher is not performing.”

The Great Lakes Education Project, a Michigan-based charter advocacy group, more accurately highlights the dichotomy between unions and charter schools. Funded largely by the right-to-work, union adverse DeVos clan, the organization has been forthright in its declaration of union failures, stating on its website in 2004 that unions are “status quo forces looking to protect their cash cow.”

The entire article is worth reading to understand the politics of unions and charters. Unions are now trying to organize charter teachers, and they hail each school that they win as a big success, but the reality is that the charter movement is at heart a union-busting movement. Its leaders are hostile to unions, as they are to public audits and any other intrusion on their freedom to operate as they wish with public money.

Categories Charter Schools, For-Profit, Michigan, Unions

Norm Scott: Eva Moskowitz as Nurse Ratched?

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2015 //
13

Norm Scott is an education activist and retired teacher who was the cameraman and producer of “The Inconvenient Truth about ‘Waiting for Superman.'” He blogs regularly. In this post, he writes about his personal theory that Eva Moskowitz is the Nurse Ratched of American education.

He writes:

For those not aware, Nurse Ratched, as Wikipedia states, “is the head administrative nurse at… a mental institution where she exercises near-absolute power over the patients’ access to medications, privileges, and basic necessities such as food and toiletries. She capriciously revokes these privileges whenever a patient displeases her. Her superiors turn blind eyes because she maintains order, keeping the patients from acting out, either through antipsychotic and anticonvulsant drugs or her own brand of psychotherapy, which consists mostly of humiliating patients into doing her bidding.” Nurse Ratched engages in an epic battle with rebel inmate Randall McMurphy (Jack Nicholson in the movie). In polls, Nurse Ratched came in 2nd to The Wicked Witch of the North as the most evil female character in movie history.

I saw a Halloween photo of a teacher dressed as the Wicked Witch of the North wearing an Eva Moskowitz mask. This was not an exaggeration. People have termed conditions for some children at Eva’s schools as verging on child abuse.

Moskowitz has staunchly denies that students were pushed out, counseled out, or pressured to withdraw.

But Scott adds this point:

A comment left on my blog by an anonymous parent stated: “They decided to start with younger and younger kids, so the communication of abuses would be harder to decipher. They decided to tell the parents one thing, and do another to the child. I once stood in the hall and listened to a dean yell so violently at a student (behind closed doors) that I couldn’t even discern the infraction. The child was thoroughly convinced he had committed a sin so unspeakable based on her threats, that he was too afraid to report the incident to his parents, hoping that she wouldn’t either. When you get detention for squeaking the rubber soles on the floor, or coughing. or sneezing in a disingenuous way; when you are taught that asking for help when you are told not to talk, is a level 4 “disrespect of a teacher” your world begins to change. Twilight Zone comes to mind.”

Twilight Zone or asylum?

Categories Charter Schools, Discipline and Suspensions, Harlem Success Academy

Gary Rubinstein on Eva’s “Got to Go” School

By dianeravitch
November 2, 2015 //
12

Gary Rubinstein took a close look at the Success Academy charter school that kept a list of “scholars” who had to go, get pushed out because they were not the “right fit.” What kind of troublemakers were these children? Babies, actually.

The following appeared in the New York Times:

“Ms. Moskowitz said the school, which then went through second grade, had severe disciplinary problems. Mr. Brown [the principal] previously said in an email that he believed he could not turn the school around if the 16 students remained.”

Gary writes:

“When I think of a school in need of ‘turnaround therapy,’ I picture a school of veteran unionized teachers that has supposedly been ‘failing’ for decades. This school was in its second year when it was in need of being turned around. And the total number of students in the school was about 200, with about 70 kindergarteners, 80 first graders, and 50 second graders. All of these students have been at the school for their entire schooling and all had Success Academy teachers. I have trouble believing that this school needed a radical turnaround plan and if it really did, what does that say about the reform mantra that ‘great teachers’ overcome all if the great teachers at Success Academy were not able to maintain control of 200 5, 6, and 7 year olds?”

To get the real inside scoop, read the reviews of this school by parents, quoted by Gary on this post.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Discipline and Suspensions, Harlem Success Academy

CREDO: Going to a Virtual Charter is a Waste of Time

By dianeravitch
November 1, 2015 //
17

CREDO of Stanford University  and the conservative Hoover Institution report that students in virtual charter schools lose 180 days of instruction in math. There are usually 180 days of schools. They learn nothing.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform
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